Danny was wondering whether it was such a good idea to have come along after all, and whether it might be better to turn round and go home, when someone tapped him on the back. He swung around, fists up, ready to defend himself, but instead of punching out, Danny smiled with relief and slapped the man matily on the shoulder. ‘Bob!’
‘Wotcher, mate!’ Bob Jarvis greeted him in return. ‘What d’yer think of all this scum?’ he sneered as he brushed away a hand holding out a leaflet to him. ‘Pathetic, ain’t they?’
With his confidence increased now he was no longer alone, Danny agreed easily with Bob. ‘Yeah, right, pathetic.’
‘See,’ said Bob, steering Danny towards the queues of smartly dressed young men pushing their way to the entrance, ‘if only them mugs’d listen they’d realise what the Union could do for ’em. It’d sort out this country’s work and money problems in no time. But this mob,’ Bob sneered again, this time at a banner-waving girl who looked barely old enough to have left school, ‘they couldn’t stand the discipline what’s needed.’ Bob continued to push him forward. ‘If this country’s ever gonna be anything again we’ve gotta fight these communist idiots. What do they know, eh? Nothing, that’s what.’
It was barely seven o’clock, still almost an hour before the meeting was due to start, but when Bob and Danny turned into Addison Road, they saw that there were already thousands of BUF supporters congregated there, waiting for the main gate into Olympia to open. As they moved slowly forward through the crush, Danny felt Bob grab his sleeve. They had stopped by a group of a dozen young men of about their own age, all wearing black shirts, armbands with the BUF insignia, and knee-high black boots.
We’ll wait here until the doors open,’ Bob told him, slipping off his long raincoat to reveal that he was dressed the same as they were. Seeing Danny’s look of surprise, Bob tapped his chest proudly and said, ‘I’m a steward, me.’
Danny nodded, trying to look impressed, but he couldn’t stop himself glancing warily over Bob’s shoulders at the increasing numbers of banner-waving, anti-fascist demonstrators.
‘See, Dan,’ Bob went on, acknowledging his colleagues with a stiff little dip of his head, ‘it’s a classless brotherhood we want. And we’re gonna explain all about it to everyone. Well, to anyone what’s got the brains to listen.’ He jerked his thumb behind him. ‘Not like these red scum. All they understand is violence. We persuade people with our views. Then, once they’ve heard what we have to say, they realise we’re right. That’s why I’m so proud to be one of the stewards.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘You can set an example, see. Let ’em have a look at how decent people conduct ’emselves.’ He flicked at a speck on his sleeve. ‘It’s just a shame your Molly never saw it that way.’
Danny, embarrassed, looked away. ‘Yer know what girls are like, Bob,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no telling ’em. I did try and explain like yer told me.’
Bob punched Danny playfully on the arm and winked. ‘Don’t worry yerself, Dan. I’ve decided to give her another chance, ain’t I? I’m gonna wear her down and she’ll be going out with me again before she knows what day it is.’
It was almost eight o’clock and the meeting was due to begin. Bob and Danny, like all the young men surrounding them, were now more than ready to file into the hall, but the door still hadn’t been opened. People were growing restless.
Suddenly, without any warning, a group of demonstrators surged forward waving their banners and jeering at the Blackshirts, singing ‘The Red Flag’ and the ‘Internationale’ at the tops of their voices. At that moment the doors were flung open from the inside and Bob shoved Danny forward into the mass of dark-uniformed men who, ignoring the taunts, began marching smartly inside.
Danny strained to turn round to see what was going on behind him, but he was being sucked along, dragged forward by the strutting crowd. From all the shouting and screaming he could hear, it sounded as though a real battle had broken out.
Inside the arena, Bob guided Danny towards a seat in the middle of one of the rows, where they sat down and waited.
It was a quarter to nine when the Blackshirt parade finally entered the hall.
They marched in with a strange, stiff-legged gait, waving replicas of the huge black and yellow flags of the British Union of Fascists with which the whole place seemed to be draped. The mood was already electric, but by the time the massed bands, all dressed in the same sombre uniform as the stewards, led in Oswald Mosley himself, in a blaze of sweeping lights, the whole hall was primed and set to give their leader a wild, adulatory welcome. As one, the audience rose to their feet and roared their salutations.
Mosley mounted the stage and all the arc lights were focused on him alone. He opened his mouth to speak but his words were immediately drowned out by barracking and yelling from one of the galleries. ‘Fascism means war!’ bellowed the groups of demonstrators who had infiltrated the meeting. ‘The Blackshirts want another world war! Stop the fascists!’
Bob tapped Danny on the arm and signalled with a nod for him to watch as members of the Blackshirt Defence Corps, who had only moments before heralded in their leader, ran to the sides of the hall and began to scramble up the sloping, tiered walls to reach the demonstrators who were perched halfway up, waving their own banners across the BUF’s flags and showering the people below with leaflets. The huge room erupted into a wild cacophony of shouts and yells with each side voicing their support for either the fascists or their opponents.
Danny watched, wincing at the force the Blackshirts used as they grabbed at the hecklers and dragged them to the ground before frogmarching them outside.
‘I told yer,’ said Bob triumphantly, ‘we respect discipline. Efficiency, see? Not like them idiots. Just look at ’em. How could they even think they’d be any match for us?’
Mosley began speaking again; this time his clipped, upper-class tones rang clearly around the arena.
Danny was dumbfounded by what he was hearing – not that an obvious ‘toff’ should speak about the same things that Bob and his friends had been drumming into him during the last few months, he had expected that; what he hadn’t expected was that Mosley was using almost exactly the self-same words.
It made Danny uncomfortable as he realised what it reminded him of: it was just like last Christmas when young Timmy and Michael had rehearsed their lines for the nativity pageant together. In the end, they had done it so often that each of them could recite the other’s part perfectly without having any sense of what they were actually saying. Much as everyone had admired the kids’ efforts, they really were more like little parrots than actors.
Danny glanced sideways at Bob – he looked transfixed as he sat there staring straight ahead at his leader. But suddenly Bob, Danny and everyone else in the hall swung their gaze towards the ceiling as a loud voice came from high above them in the rafters: ‘Down with fascism!’
The arc lights swung around until they picked out, at what must have been a hundred feet above the agitated crowds, a man shuffling his way precariously across the narrow girders in the roof. Almost immediately, Blackshirt stewards had appeared on either side of him, making their own uncertain way across the rafters towards him.
All but one of the beams of lights were returned to the stage and most eyes in the hall refocused on Mosley, who had begun speaking again. ‘It is customary at fascist meetings,’ he explained, looking directly at the assembled members of the press without a trace of irony, ‘for a very few people to prevent the audience from hearing the fascist case.’
Then there was a terrible crash, the sound of smashing glass and something fell from the rafters to the ground at the side of the hall. There was an instant huddle of Blackshirts around whatever it was that had landed. Nobody could actually see what it was, but the whisper quickly went round that it was the heckler who had unfortunately ‘slipped’.
From the back of the arena, somebody threw something which landed close by Danny’s feet; it was quickly followed by
a hail of similar missiles. Danny soon realised what they were, as the air rapidly became tainted with the sickening stench of stink bombs cracking open around him.
It was enough to make the already tense atmosphere explode. Fights broke out all around the place, both in the packed galleries and on the main floor of the hall. Danny ducked out of the way as a young woman plunged past him yelling anti-fascist slogans. She was grabbed by two equally young women, both dressed entirely in black, who chopped her to the ground with the sides of their hands.
Bob threw back his head and gave a savage laugh. ‘Let me introduce you to our jujitsu girls,’ he crowed. ‘But, good as they are, we can’t leave it all to them.’
Danny looked on in horror as Bob Jarvis took a weighted sock from his trouser pocket and swung it hard against the side of a man’s head as he cowered on the ground in front of him. Danny was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he had heard enough of the non-violent fascist case. It was time to go; he had seen enough, more than enough. And he had been made a fool of. All he wanted was to get out.
While Bob was busily ‘explaining’ his views to his unfortunate victim, Danny clambered over the back of his chair and, keeping his head well down, began to weave his way towards the back of the hall.
He took one last disbelieving look back towards the stage as he heard Mosley claiming that the brutal tactics of his henchmen and women only showed how ‘very necessary the Blackshirt Defence Corps is to defend free speech in Great Britain.’
Before he turned his head away in disgust, Danny saw Bob swing the weighted sock down on to the now unconscious man who lay at his feet.
Danny felt the taste of bile rise into his mouth; he had to get out in the fresh air. Using his elbows and his shoulders, he eventually reached the double doors where, less than an hour ago, he had entered the hall so cocky and full of it all. But his way out was barred by a bizarre-looking group of men and women in evening dress. The women’s clothes alone looked as though they would have cost Danny a year’s wages. They were all braying and laughing as the men in their group shoved their way past the anti-fascist demonstrators, heedless as to whom they knocked down in their eagerness to get inside and to listen to their hero. It took all Danny’s remaining strength to struggle past them, but he had to get out.
When he at last managed to fight his way on to the street, he found that fresher air apart, things were just as bad out there. There were lines of banner-waving demonstrators, locked in brutal clashes with club-wielding stewards dressed in the full Blackshirt regalia. Behind them were what Danny guessed must have been a couple of thousand police, mounted as well as on foot. They had their batons drawn, and made charge after charge at the fighting hordes.
Danny pressed himself against the wall and edged his way along, moving as fast as he could away from the scene of escalating madness, trying to lose himself amongst the bloodthirsty crowds, gathering to watch the spectacle.
When he finally reached Plumley Street, it was so late that even though it was a Friday night, both number ten and number twelve were in darkness. But before he went into his nanna’s house to go to bed, Danny stuck his hand through the letter box of number twelve and pulled out the key. He crept inside and, as quietly as he could, he made his way upstairs.
He paused on the landing, listening for any sounds from his parents’ room. All he heard was his father softly snoring. He just hoped that his mum was asleep as well, as he tapped on his sister’s bedroom door.
‘Moll?’ he hissed under his breath as he turned the handle. ‘You asleep?’
‘What? Who is it?’ Molly’s voice was thick with sleep.
‘It’s me. Danny.’ He sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Keep it quiet, Moll, they’re all asleep.’
‘So was I,’ she whispered tetchily, pushing herself up on her elbows. ‘This had better be good, Dan.’
Danny hesitated for a brief moment then said, ‘It’s Bob Jarvis.’
‘Not him again. I told yer, I—’
‘Listen. I don’t want yer seeing him.’
‘I don’t believe this.’ Molly was now wide awake and very angry. ‘You have the cheek to come in here and wake me up to tell me not to see someone who I ain’t even seeing?’ She poked her brother hard in the chest. ‘What’s up with you, Danny Mehan? You pissed or something? Or have yer just taken leave o’ yer senses?’
‘I mean it,’ Danny said. ‘I don’t want yer seeing him.’
‘You flaming hypocrite. Yer went barmy when I told yer I wasn’t seeing him no more. Yer kept going on about what a good bloke he was. And now yer saying I shouldn’t see him, even if I wanted to.’
‘Look, Moll, keep yer voice down and listen. He’s no good. All right? But I know he still fancies yer, and he’s talking about getting yer to go back with him. I just don’t want yer to let him kid yer, that’s all.’
‘You must think I’m a right flaming idiot. But, tell me, why should I have you telling me what I can and can’t do?’
‘I don’t care what yer think about me, but please, Moll, yer’ve gotta listen.’ Danny grabbed her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m serious. If he even comes anywhere near yer, yer to tell me. Right?’
Molly pulled her hand away from him. She had never heard her brother talk like this before. Perhaps he too had seen the other side of Bob Jarvis. ‘All right,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll tell yer.’
‘And while we’re at it,’ he said, standing up and moving backwards towards the door, ‘any other blokes who wanna see yer. I wanna know who they are and what they’re up to. All right?’
‘No it ain’t bleed’n all right. You reckon I’ve gotta report to you about who I wanna see? Yer kidding, ain’t yer?’
‘No,’ said Danny simply. ‘I ain’t. I wanna know everything about any feller who so much as talks to yer.’ With that, he was gone.
The next morning all of the family except Danny were sitting around the breakfast table in the kitchen of number twelve. Even Nora had come in from next door when Stephen had produced a couple of pounds of bacon from one of his mysterious sources. But the reappearance of the much-missed fried breakfast on the Mehans’ table still hadn’t improved the atmosphere.
‘Michael,’ snapped Molly, slamming her fork on to her plate, ‘will you please shut yer noise for five minutes? Or d’yer want me to shut yer gob for yer?’
Michael grinned at his granddad. ‘Oooo, hark at her! Wonder what’s up with old Misery Guts, eh, Farvee?’ He jerked his head at his pale, exhausted-looking sister. ‘She’s been out on too many late nights by the look of it.’
‘That’s enough, Michael,’ Katie warned him, waving the breadknife she was using to slice up the loaf to emphasise that she meant it.
‘It’s a good story though, innit, Farvee?’ Michael went on, completely ignoring all the threats.
‘It is, it is,’ Stephen agreed, putting his glasses back on to read the item from the morning paper once again.
‘So did the lion eat the man all up then?’ Timmy asked, his eyes wide and his mouth stuffed full of toast. ‘Or did it leave bits of him?’
‘I reckon there was probably bits of his uniform that the big old pussy cat would have spat out,’ said Stephen after a moment’s consideration. ‘I mean, even a big old lion wouldn’t want to eat a zoo keeper’s brass buttons and his peaked cap, now would he?’
‘Do we need to go into details while we’re eating?’ Katie asked, looking to Nora for support.
‘Sure, leave them alone,’ said Nora, smiling indulgently at her husband and young grandsons. ‘It’s not every day of the week that you hear about a keeper being attacked by lions while he’s trying to get a visitor’s hat back for him, now is it?’
‘I dunno why they need to read about the flaming zoo,’ said Katie, slapping down another heap of toast on the table and setting about slicing some more bread. ‘It gets more like the flipping monkey house in here every day, with all the chattering and squawking what’s going on.’
‘It
’s parrots what squawk, not monkeys,’ said Michael, ducking to avoid the inevitable clip round the ear for his cheek.
‘Pat,’ said Katie, tossing down the breadknife, ‘will you tell him?’
‘Do as yer mother says,’ said Pat without looking up from his plate.
Just then, Danny came into the kitchen, looking even rougher than Molly.
‘And what sort of time d’yer call this?’ Katie enquired of her eldest son. ‘Yer lucky that this lot ain’t finished everything off.’
‘I ain’t hungry,’ said Danny, dropping down on to the chair next to Sean. ‘I’ll just have a cuppa tea.’
‘What sort of a breakfast’s that when yer’ve gotta work this morning?’ Katie wanted to know. ‘And anyway,’ she added grudgingly, ‘there’s bacon.’
‘I still don’t want none, and I ain’t going in to work this morning.’
‘What?’ Now it was Pat who was questioning him. ‘But you always do a half-day on a Saturday.’
Danny held up his hand. ‘It’s all right, I just nipped along and told Joe there’s something I’ve gotta do.’
‘Aw yeah?’ Pat said suspiciously. ‘And what’s so important that yer gonna miss work? You sure you ain’t chucked that job in, Danny?’
‘No. I promised I wouldn’t unless I found something else, and I ain’t. Satisfied?’
‘Don’t you dare speak to yer father like that.’ Katie smacked the flat of her hand round the back of Danny’s head. ‘You ain’t too big for a good hiding yer know, boy.’
‘No, but I’m big enough to ask Lizzie to marry me,’ Danny blurted out.
Just Around the Corner Page 27
